While there have been presidents who had pseudo-aristocratic backgrounds (JFK) or still had an operational business (Jimmy Carter and his peanut farm), they seemed to have remained in touch with the average working class citizen. But we have never had a “billionaire” president who had spent all his time in either his gold-plated tower or his exclusive golf clubs, and seemed live in some fantasy biosphere in which he was allowed to be completely untouched by and unsympathetic to the realities of working people as we have seen in Donald Trump (Herbert Hoover was as untouched and unsympathetic, but he was not a “billionaire”).
We are talking about a man who has repeatedly vowed to substantially cut Social Security and Medicare; one of his recent executive orders—which if you read between the lines do little if anything to help Americans most in need—“defers” payroll taxes, but what does that mean, exactly? We know that it shuts off funding for Social Security and Medicare that tens of millions of elderly people depend on to survive. But “defer” means that at some point individuals will suddenly see a tsunami of unpaid taxes further gutting their tax refund checks that Trump’s tax cut law has already done. A dollar here and a dollar there per paycheck doesn’t help people on the lower end of the pay scale, but it will add-up to a lot by the time tax time comes. People should be given a choice if they want a payroll tax deferral, just like they are given a choice about how many exemptions they want on their W-4 forms.
If Trump is a fool playing with people’s lives during the pandemic, there has to be a reckoning. Trump has been protected by “fixers” who have broken laws to protect him from his proclivities, but not everyone can be expected to play by his rules. He shouldn’t have been treating Germany and its leaders so badly; it is bad enough that he has not the slightest skill in international diplomacy which has hurt this country’s strategic interests, but it was kind of dumb for him to do so on a “personal” level. Soon after it was reported that Trump intended to gut the U.S.’ NATO presence in Germany by another third, it was announced that Deutsch Bank complied with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office subpoena for Trump’s financial records, which Trump used to obtain $2 billion in loans when no other bank would loan him a nickel, after the experience of multiple times Trump bailing on his debts through bankruptcy.
But it is not just Trump is lives in some gilded bubble that he thinks will deter all the brickbats hurled at him, but the “kids,” particular those who have been given government positions that they have no competence for, meaning of course Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. Both of them were born with silver spoons planted firmly in their mouths, both have proved to be failed “entrepreneurs” on their own (Kushner’s 666 5th Ave blunder, Ivanka’s failed clothing and jewelry line), and both are living off real estate “grants” from daddy, which these days requires them to do just enough to do as little damage as possible. In fact, after his 666 disaster, Kushner’s father is now back “in charge” since he’s out of prison for financial fraud, although the old chip may be up to his old tricks again, since there are a lot of questions about the bailout by Qatar-backed Brookfield Asset Management. Ivanka’s daddy may also be taking a vacation in a prison cell; can you imagine if Trump is convicted and sentenced to prison? For someone who says he might not willingly leave the White House even if he does lose the election, trying to “rassle” him into an orange jumpsuit and into a prison cell would be one hell of a carnival freak show.
Yet despite their lack of business acumen, Ivanka and Jared are somehow making loads of money--$82 million in 2017, $135 million in 2018, and “approximately” $36 million in 2019, although because of reporting loopholes may actually be as high as $157 million. Remember that because they have “government” jobs, they are not supposed to be personally involved in outside business affairs. But then again, they didn’t really have to do anything to make that money before their government positions, just being figureheads paying underlings do the heavy lifting while they…do what now? Advise and formulate domestic and foreign policy as “advisers” to the president, or in the case of Kushner, “in charge” of Middle East peace, the COVID-19 pandemic response, and overseeing the border wall. Whatever.
No one is really sure what exactly Ivanka does, except that while she personally “created” all those millions jobs in the first three years of the administration, she isn’t taking any responsibility for all those millions of job losses since March. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a “plan” to fix that: get off your lazy asses and “Find Something New,” like a job other people are looking for but can’t find. It costs money to “learn a completely new skill,” so maybe Ivanka can set-up a grant program out of her pocket. I mean, not everyone has high-paying pretend work, prances around in expensive clothes and has lots and lots of money to burn to spend time at expensive social clubs and not having to learn new “skills,” like actually doing a honest day’s work just once in their lives.
A Columbia Journalism Review article called Ivanka “The Queen of Spin,” and although she has been linked to some legally questionable real estate dealings all over the world, “This pattern of shady, perhaps even illegal, business practices never really sticks to Ivanka, nor does it inform the media narrative about her instincts, judgment, scruples, or expertise. The media have had no problem hitting Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and even Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, very hard for foreign entanglements that might make them susceptible to blackmail. So why not Ivanka?” And why not Ivanka? At a Wyoming fundraiser she claimed that she “inherited” her moral and ethical “compass” from daddy. Oh, I believe it, but what are we supposed to make of that, given her father’s proclivities for crime?
The University of Pennsylvania student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, spoke to numerous students who remembered Ivanka’s time there; some thought she was aloof but “nice,” never mixed in the usual social circles or participated in student activities, walked around with an air of “I am somebody,” was “smart” but “didn’t seem all that super intelligent,” and according to one student, he thought it was “kind of funny” that he always beat her in negotiation exercises—but she was “very gracious.”
It didn’t actually matter how well Ivanka did in school, of course, because she already had a multi-million dollar paycheck waiting for her the moment she left school, from some phony “senior vice president” position in the Trump Organization; it didn’t matter if she was qualified or not—she was “daddy’s girl,” and that was the only qualification she needed. It certainly didn’t hurt that she was daddy’s favorite—we can see that in those just-this-side of incestuous photos with and statements by daddy. But it doesn’t matter what “qualifications” Ivanka or Kushner have to tell anyone anything, especially to Americans who have to work to just stay alive and keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. They do and say whatever they please. Nobody in the Trump clan has ever known want, only snapping their fingers to get whatever their hearts’ desire.
While it is fair to say nearly everyone in the Trump administration is more interested in their personal agendas (like Stephen Miller and immigration) than with the problems of normal people, Ivanka and Kushner have hung around so long and still have done nothing that has left an impression other than arrogance and conceit. Just a few months after Trump’s inauguration, John Oliver warned viewers that Ivanka and Kushner were phonies who could not be counted on to provide a “moderating” influence in the administration, and that turned out to be true. No amount of that face powder that Ivanka plasters on her face can hide that.
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